What happens when you grow up with one Italian parent and one non-Italian parent? The Italian side wins, of course! Linda Dini Jenkins (late of the Pickering House) and Barbara Worton have been friends since 1957 and weathered that storm. Both pursued careers in writing and have each published several collections, as well as written a play together which has been produced at Centastage in Boston, Westbeth Theatre in New York City, and Rutherford, New Jersey’s William Carlos Williams Theatre. They will read from their latest collections as well as something old and something new, and will alternately have you in stitches and tears.
Linda Dini Jenkins is the author of Becoming Italian: Chapter and Verse from an Italian American Girl, Up at the Villa: Travels with My Husband, and Journey of a Returning Christian: Writing into God. Her new chapbook, How Way Leads on to Way, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Linda’s poetry has been published in Voices in Italian Americana, Ovunque Siamo, Touchstone, Tampa Review, South Florida Poetry Review, Vermont Voices I and II, and Poeti italo-americani e italo-canadesi, among others. She is the author of the one-act play, Things I Never Told My Mother and, with lifelong friend Barbara Worton, she coauthored the choreopoem, If I’m Talking, Why Aren’t You Listening? She is a contributing writer and copy editor for Abruzzissimo Magazine and writes occasionally for The Adventures of The Baker’s Daughter. She lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire and Sulmona (Abruzzo), Italy.
Barbara Worton is the author of Chatterbox: Stories from a Noisy Life, Bedtime Stories: The Short, Long and Tall Tales of a Sleepwriter and Too Tall Alice. She co-authored If I’m Talking, Why Aren’t You Listening? with Linda Dini Jenkins and The Adventures of The Baker’s Daughter with Rochelle Udell. Her stories have appeared in Memories of John Lennon, The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Ovunque Siamo, The Paterson Literary Review, VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, Platform Review and Italian Americana. Her writing and publishing career includes reviewing, editing, and ghostwriting for publishers in the US and UK, working as an advertising copywriter, and as a writer for some of the world’s largest publishing, fashion, beauty, media/entertainment, professional services, and other household-name organizations. She was an Associate Producer on the independent film, Surviving on LES, which won the Chelsea Film Festival Audience Feature Film Award and the Bowery Film Festival’s Feature Film Award. Barbara also writes songs as a member of Laverne + Ralph.
Please enter by the Athenaeum garden gate on Botts Ct.
(The front door will be locked at 6:00 pm.)
Please bring a folding lawn chair if you have one.
In case of rain, the event will be indoors.